The Triumph of White Men’s Democracy -Democracy in Theory and Practice Chapter 10 The Triumph of White Men’s Democracy -Democracy in Theory and Practice

Democracy and Society Egalitarian Society Political equality for all white males Americans preferred the “self-made” man Attack on licensed professions Any white man should be able to practice law or medicine (trained or not) Americans’ no longer feared that democracy would lead to anarchy. Each individual was to be given an equal start in life, but equality of opportunity did not mean equality of result. The American people were happy to accept a society of winners and losers. Despite persistent and growing economic inequality, Americans generally believed they had created an egalitarian society

Democratic Culture Rise of new forms of literature and art directed at a mass audience Some sought success by pandering to popular taste Others captured the spirit by portraying everyday life of ordinary Americans

Romantic Movement Literature Valued strong feeling and mystical intuition Appealed to feelings that all people possessed goodness, beauty and truth Mass Market Rise in literacy Revolution in the technology of printing Some women writers implicitly protested against their situation by portraying men in general as tyrannical, unreliable, or vicious and the women they abandoned or failed to support as resource individualist capable of making their own way in a man’s world. But standard happy endings sustained the convention that a women’s place was in the home, for a virtuous and protective man usually turned up and saved the heroine from independence. E.D.E.N. Southworth George Lippard Augusta Jane Evans THEMES: Gothic Horror Perils of heroines Sentimental novels

Theater Melodrama became the dominant genre Standard fare Involved the inevitable trio Heroine Villain Hero Women & Men of all classes attended

Painters Began depicting scenes of everyday life William Sidney Mount George Caleb Bingham Graphic images of Americans voting, carrying goods on riverboats, and engaging in other everyday activities

Architecture Reflected democratic spirit glorifying the achievements of the republic Symbolized an identification of the US with the democracy of Ancient Greece

Poetry Higher culture & Refined Sensibility Henry Wadsworth Longfellow James Russell Lowell Oliver Wendell Holmes Lofty sentiments and moral messages to a receptive middle class Ralph Waldo Emerson Philosophy of self-reliance Herman Melville Nathaniel Hawthorne Ironic and pessimistic view of life “…Be not the slave of your own past. Plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep and swim far, so you shall come back with self-respect With new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old…” Nathaniel Hawthorne-The Scarlett Letter Herman Melville-Moby Dick Failed to gain a large readership until mid-19th century. Now regarded as masterworks of American fiction